


Black Swan

by Spylace



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Like, Mind Control, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-10 02:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: Wanda’s brother is dead; Wanda is an Avenger.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major impact, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.

After the sky falls, Wanda buries her brother in its ruins.

Where would they go? Sokovia is there home.

They’d just wanted to protect their home. That’s all.

They didn’t want any more fighting or the bombs or innocent children dying on the streets.

The Avengers offer to take her in. Perhaps she might have even considered it if Pietro was alive. Maybe if her heart was not as hard. But Pietro is dead and her heart has turned to stone. She does not need to read minds to see relief steal across their faces when she shakes her head in a quick no.

A part of her, a very small part of her, who’d dreamed of an age of heroes for her motherland, whispers that she is not so different. She has powers. She has sacrificed much for these powers—she has strength. But she wasted it all when she needed it the most. What is left for her to avenge without her brother?

She toys with the black cross at her throat, a gift warmed by her skin. It is smooth like the edge of a kettle on a drying rack. A river rock between her fingers. Pietro’s supple skin.

Wanda pulls it off the delicate chain and allows her hair to fall freely down her back. She leaves the cross on top of her brother’s grave.

She won’t need it where she is going.

A refugee camp has sprung up overnight a mile west from the town. It is well-supplied. Clean. There is plenty to go around but everyone is quiet. Some tens of hundreds of thousands rescued hold their breath and their eyes glued to the screen because the Avengers have once again taken something they held dear.

There is a man at the far edge, deep in his bottles. He barely takes notice when she sits beside him. His grief radiates like a living thing. But it’s his anger that calls her when he squints at her with blood-shot eyes, hand groping for a gun she knows he has.

“You.” He slurs. “You were with them.”

“Not with them.” She recoils, revolted. “I _was_ —I am a patriot.”

“A _patriot_.”

He laughs.

“You wish to destroy the Avengers. How?” Her fingers flex. She twists them into the folds of her skirt where the deep red hides the glow in her skin. “Tell me how it can be done.”

“Is not for little girls like you.”

He allows the hand on his face. He is exhausted, tired, wounded badly in his soul. His skin is oily and dusted with a film of dirt as though he has not washed in a very long time. The scruffy beard scratches her finger tips and he starts as red light seeps across his chin and down his throat.

She gasps when she sees a little boy. He takes after his mother in looks. Their corpses are packed between the walls like pressed flowers. In his father’s arms when it should have been him.

_It should have been me._

“No.” She says fiercely. “It should have been them.”

Wanda thinks of Stark whose name haunts her still. Captain Rogers who is a deviant. Banner, whose anger nearly equals her own. Romanoff is a monster she knows the Avengers to be. The one with the arrows, Hawkeye, Barton, almost made it seem as he cared.

She thinks of her brother’s disapproval but he is dead and gone and cold in the ground.

“They will pay for what they have done.”

The red haze clears from Helmut Zemo’s eyes. He sets the bottle down.

“What is your name little girl?”

“My name is Wanda.”


	2. Chapter 2

The base is empty. Wanda’s eyes glitter as she takes it all in. She tries to imagine how it all might have looked before. Zemo’s life. Everything’s gone now. Abandoned.

She steps over bones and putrid flesh. The chain around her neck jumps at her heartbeat and she hurries to keep up with Zemo’s longer strides.

Zemo is sure of himself. Knows this place like home.

“Where are we?”

Her answer comes from the shadows skirting around her feet.

“I am,” Zemo says, voice narrowed from dust. “Was, Sokovian intelligence.”

“Why are we here?”

Because there is nothing here except reminder that their world is gone. Their families are gone. Each second they waste in this tomb, the Avengers heal, gather strength.

“We are wasting time.” She says when he wipes off the screens with a reverent hand. “I know their weakness. I will destroy them.”

“You will martyr them.” Zemo says sharply.

The computer boots. Sterile blue light spills across the floor. She remembers the mind stone whispering against the side of her temple. This is something she never shared with Pietro. Couldn’t. She wonders what he would say if she told him that the mind stone spoke to her.

She wonders if it spoke to him too.

“They must destroy themselves.” Zemo explains. “The world must see them for what they are. Frauds, liars, monsters— _murderers_.”

“They know.” She bursts out. “My brother is dead. They _know_ —!”

He stares at her in pity.

“Little girl, people are stupid. You saw how Ultron united them. People see heroes.”

His words end on a strangled note as red light snaps around his throat. She shudders when she remembers it. When she touched it. They should have never brought it here. She was so sorry she brought Ultron home.

She lets him go. He lands on his knees, supplicant. The only sound in the room is the hacking. Had her brother suffered? She doesn’t know.

“I can make you come with me.”

But she doesn’t mean it. She does not need him. Wanda does not need Zemo who is baseline human and cannot challenge the gods.

 

“You could.” He concedes as though it was ever in doubt.

She wipes his chin with the hem of her sleeve and she—

 

                        Looks—Inside—

 

His—

 

 

—Head

 

_It’s beautiful._

“You should not be here.” Zemo sighs enthralled, eyes tracking the red sparks at the edge of his vision. “You are so young.”

“The Avengers took everything from me. Like they took everything from you.”

She offers him a hand. He takes it.

Zemo is not her brother. No one can replace her brother. But he will do. For now.

“Then let’s start.”


End file.
